Compelling Voices in Birding and Conservation

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Join us for four energizing and engaging presentations focused around birding and conservation.

Presented in partnership with the Chicago Ornithological Society and the Chicago Audubon Society, this special series features four unique speakers with very different backgrounds and experiences in the birding community. From the impact of forest management to birding "big years," this series offers something for everyone.

All presentations include museum exploration starting at 6pm, with the evening's presentation beginning at 6:30pm. A cash bar will be available. Read on to learn more and reserve your spot.

Join us for an evening with renowned author and naturalist Drew Lanham for this special talk. A native of Edgefield, South Carolina, J. Drew Lanham is the author of "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature," which received the Reed Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Southern Book Prize, and was a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal. He is a birder, naturalist, and hunter-conservationist who has published essays and poetry in publications including "Orion, Audubon, Flycatcher, and Wilderness," and in several anthologies, including "The Colors of Nature," "State of the Heart," "Bartram’s Living Legacy," and "Carolina Writers at Home." An Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University, he and his family live in the Upstate of South Carolina, a soaring hawk’s downhill glide from the southern Appalachian escarpment that the Cherokee once called the Blue Wall.

Big Year Birding AdventuresThursday, September 19, 2019

Lynn BarberAuthor and Extreme Birder

Lynn E. Barber is a patent attorney with a passion for birding. She has done several big years: a record-breaking Texas big year in 2005, an American Birding Association (ABA) big year in 2008, which she finished with 723 species—the third-best at the time, and an Alaska big year. She chronicled her ABA big year in her book "Extreme Birder: One Woman’s Big Year." She is also the author of "Birds in Trouble," which focuses on 42 imperiled bird species and what can be done to improve their situations. For her talk in this series, she will speak to us about her “Big Year Birding Adventures”—focusing on quests and adventures from her Texas and Alaska big years which will be covered in a forthcoming book. Since she’s now a resident of Alaska, we are fortunate to have her regale us here in Chicago!

Past Speakers

Colombia: Coffee, Birds, and a Community Conservation StoryThursday, January 31, 2019

Dr. Amanda Rodewald’s research interests revolve around ecology and habitat management in human-dominated landscapes both here and in the tropics. Through a media-rich presentation, we will visit with beloved species such as mourning and cerulean warblers and summer tanagers on a Colombian coffee plantation. Learn how your consumer choice of shade-grown coffee benefits not only neotropical migrants wintering in Central and South America, but also the communities that provide this important habitat. Interweaving biological and economic research findings with stories about people and birds, this accomplished researcher will illustrate how tropical forest management can support sustainable communities and sustainable habitats. Coffee samples will be available.

Triage for Endangered Birds: Which species do we save?Thursday, March 28, 2019

Bridget Stutchbury is a professor in the Department of Biology at York University, Toronto. She did her M.Sc. at Queen’s University and her Ph.D. at Yale, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. Since the 1980s, she has studied migratory songbirds to understand their behavior, ecology and conservation but has also witnessed first hand the shocking declines of many birds including wood thrushes, barn swallows and bobolinks. She studies the incredible migration journeys of songbirds and the many threats they face along the way. She is the author of "Silence of the Songbirds" (2007) and "The Private Lives of Birds" (2010) and was also featured in the award-winning 2015 documentary "The Messenger." She is hard at work on her fourth book, which addresses the thorny issues of which species we should choose to try to save from extinction. Her program will delve into the difficult, soul-searching questions we must confront in the Anthropocene era about what we can and should do for birds on the brink of extinction.